There's been a growing movement on Instagram to celebrate the beauty of women of all ages. Now, actress Shannen Doherty is lending her voice.
Doherty, 50, just shared a makeup-free selfie with an important message in the caption. "Watching movies tonight and noticed there were few female characters I could relate to," she wrote. "You know, women without fillers, without Botox, without a facelift. Women who embraced their face and all the experience it showed."
Doherty then referenced her own life, including her journey with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. "I have lived. I love that I've lived and that my face reflects my life," she said. "I survived a lot, yes, cancer but more than that."
Doherty revealed in February 2020 that she was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. She was originally diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015 and went into remission in 2017.
"My cancer came back, and that's why I'm here," she said in an interview with ABC News that aired on Good Morning America. "I don't think I've processed it. It's a bitter pill to swallow in a lot of ways."
Doherty she didn't immediately reveal her diagnosis, partly due to the April 2019 death of her friend and Beverly Hills 90210 co-star Luke Perry. "It's so weird for me to be diagnosed and then somebody who was, you know, seemingly healthy to go first," said Doherty. "It was really, like, shocking." Doherty also said that she kept her diagnosis quiet because she wanted to show people that you can have a "normal" life with stage 4 cancer.
"One of the reasons, along with Luke, that I did 90210 and didn't really tell anybody [was] because I thought, people can look at that [as] people with stage 4 can work too," she said. "Our life doesn't end the minute we get that diagnosis. We still have some living to do."
Doherty said she's still struggled a bit with her diagnosis. "I definitely have days where I say, 'Why me?'" she said. "And then I go, well, 'Why not me? Who else? Who else besides me deserves this?' None of us do."
Many people, including fellow ageless beauty advocate Paulina Porizkova, lent their support for Doherty's makeup-free selfie in the comments. "Thank you. We need more of you," Porizkova wrote in the comments. "Aging is a privilege afforded to few. You wear your journey beautifully ❤️❤️," someone else wrote.
Near the end of her Instagram post, Doherty hinted that she's struggled with her appearance in the past—but that now she's much more comfortable. "I embrace me now. Finally," she said. "Done with the perception magazines and Hollywood try to make us in to [sic]. I want to see women like me. Women like us."
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